Foreign Affairs; The U.N. Chief's Dilemma

By LESLIE H. GELB

Published: December 31, 1992

Can't work with the U.S., can't work without it.

That is the dilemma the United Nations Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, faces as he grapples with America's role in U.N. peacekeeping and peacemaking operations since the cold war's end. Without U.S. leadership and power, the U.N. lacks muscle. With it, the U.N. loses its independent identity.

The Secretary General acknowledges in an interview that the U.N. cannot undertake any major military operation unless the U.S. participates actively. But when it does, it insists on running the whole show and uses the U.N. simply as a fig leaf, as in Iraq and Somalia.

Thus the double whammy of America's power and its insistence on full control forces the U.S. to shoulder the burden of policing the world and simultaneously undermines the U.N., which could otherwise unload some of that burden.

The solution to the dilemma is for Washington to back a larger role for the U.N., even at the cost of some U.S. independence.

No one is more aware of both the problem and the solution than Mr. Boutros-Ghali. "With political imagination," he says from his riverside perch high atop U.N. headquarters, "the United States can play an umbrella role and still allow us to do our operations with, let us say, the necessary minimum of independence."

The U.N. leader chooses his words carefully, reflecting long years as Egypt's chief diplomat and one year at the U.N., where he has engaged in intricate battles with the U.S. and other major powers.

Mr. Boutros-Ghali is now tussling with Washington over Somalia. He wants the U.S. not simply to deliver relief supplies, but to disarm thugs and stay until the job is largely finished. But President Bush has dispatched U.S. forces only on American terms -- a quickie operation under U.S. command, with forces empowered only to deliver food and medicine and to "defend themselves."

Though the Americans were to operate on their own and not through the U.N. chain of command, Mr. Bush asked for permission to use the U.N. flag. Mr. Boutros-Ghali refused.

Relations with the U.S. have often proved so touchy that Mr. Boutros-Ghali prefers to talk about cases where Washington's role has not been so prominent. "We have many operations where we have been able to act with force without a central American role," the Secretary General says, as seagulls swoop through the fog past his windows, "and many where we operate with only marginal cooperation from the United States." He cites U.N. intervention in Cambodia, Angola and Mozambique.

Even in these instances, he acknowledges, U.N. forces require American logistical support, and they hope the U.S. will ride to the rescue in an emergency. "But," he says, "I can assure you that in the majority of disputes, the situation can be solved without the big deployment of forces" if the U.N. intervenes early.

Mr. Boutros-Ghali then makes a sad admission. He has suspended efforts to establish a standing U.N. military force. The opposition of the U.S. and other major powers, he says, remains too strong.

Instead he wants member nations to "earmark certain forces" for U.N. use. He hopes that "at a minimum" the U.S. will provide logistical support under U.N. command. "If this can be done, it will solve 60 or 70 percent of the problems" of deploying U.N. forces to trouble spots quickly and sustaining them. He also wants Washington seriously to encourage regional organizations to act under U.N. sponsorship.

"Let us be very honest," he says, punctuating his tough words with his trademark smile. "Just as the United States doesn't like others to take charge, other countries also don't like the United States to play a dominant role in the United Nations."

The danger, he continues, is that the U.N. "will lose its credibility. . . . The image will come to be that the United Nations equals the United States, and then many nations will no longer accept the United Nations."

Mr. Boutros-Ghali then comes to his punch line: "My message is that it is in the interest of the United States to preserve the identity and the minimum credibility of the United Nations. Otherwise, you must be prepared to be the policeman of the world -- with all those advantages and disadvantages."